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This Project Blue Book case file, released through The Black Vault, collects records on the 24 July 1948 sighting by two Eastern Airlines pilots of a wingless object about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Alabama. It contains teletype replies from military bases reporting no aircraft movements, a 1948 Project Sign special investigation report with an interview of a Robins Air Force Base witness, and a December 1948 intelligence report. It also includes newspaper extracts, a Harvard College Observatory letter and Hynek's Project Grudge evaluation index.
“Lockheed”2 pages
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By ALBERT RILEY Two Atlanta pilots of the East Air Lines have baffled the nation with a bizarre story of a huge, wingless, flame-shooting, double-decked aircraft they said flashed past their DC-3 airliner at 2:45 a.m., yesterday morning about 20 miles southwest of Montgomery, Ala. The two filers, Capt. Clarence Shipe Chiles and his co-pilot, John R. Whitted are puzzled themselves at what they saw 5,000 feet over Alabama. "If you look at one of those fantastic Flash Gordon rocket ships in the funny papers, you've got a picture of what we saw," said Whitted. Nearly four times larger than a B-20, it resembled a B-29 fuselage with the wings off, Chiles said, and flames were shooting out of the tail 35 to 40 feet. Traveling at a speed they estimated at between 500 and 700 miles an hour. the mysterious aircraft was brilliantly lighted with decks of windows. Underneath, on the belly of the ship, they said there was a sort of blue fluorescent glow. Flying a northeasterly course on scheduled flight from Houston, kas, yia New Orleans, to At- "As a B-29 bomber pilot during the war, I saw some strange things after Japan." Whitted said, "but I never saw anything like that." United Press recorted "no agent" from Maxwell Field facilities and from Capt. Eddie Hickenaviter, Eastern Air Lines President, at Jacksonville, Fla. The Force appealed at Wash- ington suggested a possibility that the strange craft might have been a million version of the Boeing transport, reportedly under- tests now somewhere in the has its wings connected far on the fuselage and this confluse an ooserver into making it was wingless. But the is propelled by conventional lines. lanta, the two pilots saw the strange object whiz past them in a southwesterly direction, toward Mobile and New Orleans. Both pilots, who served as Army fliers during the war; said they had never seen anything before that even faintly resemplied the mystery craft, and they had no idea what it could have been. Neither Army nor CAA officers could throw any light on the my3 Constitution Staff Photo—Ryan Sanders DESCRIBE MYSTERIOUS "PLANE"—Co-Pilot John B. Whitted (left) and Pilot, Clarence Shipe Chiles, of an Eastern Air Lines DC-3, tell Lockwood Doty, WCON News Director, how they saw a huge, strange, jet-propelled. double-decker, wingless aircraft whiz past them early yesterday morning near Montgomery, Ala. PILOTS' DRAWINGS OF MYSTERY CRAFT tery, and an Air Force spokesman at Washington said that "obviously" this country has no plane resembling a double-decked, jet propelled, wingless transport shooting a 40-foot, flame out of its back end. The pilots said there were 20 passengers aboard their plane, but all were asleep except one man, C. L. McKelvie, of 85 Hanelton Pike, Columbus, Ohio. McKelvie, said Chiles, told the pilots that he also saw the mystery aircraft. "It was a moonlit night with some clouds." Chiles said, "and we were flying along on the regular airway, when we saw ahead and slightly above and to our right what appeared to be a tremendous jet of flame. "We asked each other, 'What in the world is this?' "It flashed down and we veered to the left and it veered to its left, and passed us about 700 feet to our right and about 700 feet above us. "Then, as if the pilot had seen us and wanted to avoid us, it pulled up with a tremendous burst of flame out of its rear and zoomed up into the clouds. Its prop-wash or jet-wash rocked our DC-3." The pilots said they saw two rows of square windows on the craft, and Whitted said he counted six windows, but could see no occupants because the ship was going too fast. The light of the plane and its jet flames was so bright it almost gave them "lightning blindness," they said, and they had to turn up their instrument panel lights in their cockpit. "It was a man-made thing all right," they said. "After it passed us." Chiles said, we must have sat their for five minutes without saying a word, we were so speechless." They reported by radio what they had seen and their message went to Maxwell Field at Montgomery, and to Lawson Field at Fort Benning, and to CAA offices. the pilots said. They told rout it again when they landed at lanta, they said, but everyone was incredulous. Chiles and Whitted both said they were certain it was not a meteor or comet, because they had seen them before in the air.
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